


mission creep

by Anonymous



Category: Avenue 5
Genre: Crack, Drug Use, Multi, Other, Spoilers for the end of S1, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23420860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: This was Matt's eighth hundred loop, give or take.  He wasn't getting on that shuttle.  He knew approximately five hundred of the things that could happen to that shuttle, and four hundred and seventy-three of them were really bad.
Relationships: Matt Spencer/anyone who'll let him
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26
Collections: Anonymous





	mission creep

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not saying I'm coping by writing crackfic, but I'm coping by writing crackfic.

This was Matt's eighth hundred loop, give or take. He wasn't getting on that shuttle. He knew approximately five hundred of the things that could happen to that shuttle, and four hundred and seventy-three of them were really bad.

In the beginning, sure, he tried to help, because who wouldn't? He wasn't a monster. The problem was, he wasn't much of a hero either, and when the loops began, he'd already been on the ship long enough for Billie to get to know how very much not a hero he was, and she was the only person on board who really knew what was going on. So he tried to get her to take him seriously, but she only told him to get out of her way, or to stop telling lies, or to stay out of Herman Judd's drug stash before Judd went on some kind of rampage and ordered everyone's cabins searched to find his missing drugs, and he didn't really blame her because he wouldn't believe him either.

The loop after Billie mentioned Herman Judd's drug stash, Matt took it upon himself to try everything in it. He died _really_ soon in that loop, not because Judd was possessive of his stash but because Judd had a really high tolerance of everything and didn't label anything, and Matt probably mixed too many of the wrong things together, but still, he'd felt pretty good up to the part where he'd started puking and then the paralysis had set in.

Some time around loop number fifty, Matt had had the idea of getting to Billie through Captain Clark, only to discover that Billie didn't think highly of Captain Clark's competence either, and also that Captain Clark cried when he had sex. Matt managed to confirm that in about twenty separate loops. It didn't seem to vary depending on Captain Clark's sobriety or lack thereof, or what they're doing in bed. Even when he managed to keep his American accent together, Captain Clark cried. A lot. He was also a cuddler, which was, around loop two hundred or so, kind of nice. Comforting. Loop one hundred ninety-seven they went way off course and ended up crashing into Uranus, which would have been stressful enough if Judd hadn't made a bunch of bad jokes about it all the way there. Even Jordan thought they were terrible jokes.

(Matt had slept with Jordan a few times. Mostly bros helping bros, mutual handjobs, sleeping with backs touching backs because they're not gay, and for the rest of the trip things were always weird between them and Jordan couldn't stop looking at Matt's mouth, et cetera.)

(Matt had also slept with Herman Judd. More than a few times. It was honestly some of the worst sex he'd ever had, and he didn't know why he kept doing it, except there was only so much he could do, trapped on a spaceship that was careening off course into the outer reaches of the solar system, except steal and sell drugs, and try to see who he could get away with fucking, and encourage the laser light show so he could see whose face the cloud of shit turned into this time, and sabotage the golf course, and, okay, his actual job.)

The thing was, it was hard enough being in customer service without the passengers finding out that their trip has been extended by three years. Or five years. Or eight years. It was even harder when they heard about the president's idea to jettison five hundred non-essential personnel. There was pretty much no loop in which that jettisoning was allowed to take place, except for the one where everyone in charge got food poisoning except for Iris. The problem with that loop was that she didn't stop at five hundred.

(Matt slept with Iris once. It was good but also a little off-putting. "I have to do all the work myself," she'd said, two seconds before he was about to come, and his back already hurting from trying to hold off until she did. She'd also answered two of Judd's calls during it.

Matt would still totally sleep with her again, given the opportunity, but she's just not that into him.)

Loop number eight hundred was far from the first time a bunch of passengers stupided themselves to death either. In fact, loop eight hundred had fewer passengers stupiding themselves to death than average (twenty-nine), but it was the first time that Matt had been responsible for it.

They were all going to be alive again next loop, he told himself, as he changed the airlock code and helped himself to more grief chocolate. (He had override codes to all the vending machines, had had them since loop seventeen.) No one ever really died on this ship. It was like the children's classic, Pet Cemetery. Literally everyone on this ship had died before. There was the time they crashed into Uranus, of course, but also the time that Spike managed to piss off the aliens into killing them all.

Matt regretted that loop. He'd liked the aliens. They were like Ewoks, but color-changing and with tentacles. (And no, he hadn't fucked one. He hadn't had the chance.) Maybe they would meet the aliens again, he thought, unwrapping another misery candy bar. Matt could learn to communicate with them. He knew sign language and Esperanto and high school Spanish. He was basically a linguistic genius.

("You're not a linguistic genius," Iris had said, in loops ten, thirteen, twenty-seven, thirty-two, thirty-six, thirty-nine, forty-seven, forty-eight, sixty, sixty-six, seventy, seventy-one--in a lot of loops. Matt could probably spend an entire loop counting how many times Iris had been unimpressed by his language skills or just by him generally.)

Around the hundredth loop, Matt started to get philosophical. What if it was some kind of test? What if it was a perpetually revolving afterlife? What if he was a character in a video game and every death was a game over? What if he'd been helping himself to too many of Judd's drugs and the passengers' prescription medications? By loop three hundred he'd got it memorized who had the antidepressants and which kind and how many they had left.

(One loop, he snorted two Xanax and ended up sleeping with Karen Kelly. It was the best night of Matt's entire lives. She never wanted to sleep with him again. He tried. He tried a lot. She didn't waver. He couldn't remember the exact sequence that led to that turn of events because, well, he'd snorted two Xanax and chased it with half a bottle of the Judd brand vodka, Juddka. If he were a character in a video game, he'd really like the cheat code that could get him into Karen's bed again. Just once. He wouldn't overuse it. Much.)

"Okay," he said, as Frank hurried Karen away, an arm around her shoulders. He could be that arm, he thought, and reached for another bar of grief chocolate. "So we're stuck here for eight more years, we have no flavoring, and Iris is going to get snatched by the uncuddly aliens, the ones with the British accents and beady eyes. Anyone else want some chocolate?"

"Shut up, Matt," said Captain Clark, whose ears were erogenous zones.

"Yeah," said Judd, "shut up--"

"Uppers? Downers?"

Judd shut up and tried to grab both. (The uppers, Matt was fairly sure, were stolen from Judd's stash in the first place. Contrary to Billie's assumption, Herman Judd never noticed when Matt, or anyone else, stole his drugs. He saw something was missing, decided it must be missing because he took it and forgot about it, and then went looking for another drug. Matt didn't need to go through eight hundred loops to come to the conclusion that maybe Herman Judd shouldn't be in charge of any company, let alone one that had anything to do with people, outer space, or people in outer space. He didn't need to go through any loops at all.) Matt wasn't going to give him both--Judd'd choked on his own vomit in at least ninety of the loops--even though he wasn't Herman Judd's keeper, Herman Judd's keeper was on a shuttle that was, statistically speaking, getting closer and closer to the snooty aliens, or colliding with an asteroid and becoming space junk. The other, rarer, outcomes were just as grim. Matt wasn't going to give Judd both because there were plenty of other people on this ship who could use some good drugs and he wasn't going to let Judd hog them all.

"Don't mind if I do," said Jordan.

"I think I'll stick with alcohol," said Captain Clark.

"Come on, Matt, gimme the drugs," Judd whined.

Matt sighed, and tipped out some downers for Judd. It was easier when he was sedated, anyway, and he probably wasn't going to die from a small handful of whatever that was. "Billie?" he asked, rattling the pill bottle.

She crossed her arms and said, "Someone on board this cursed ship needs to remain clear-headed."

Matt squinted at her. She knew it was cursed too? But because they were too surrounded to talk about the looping and Billie at least had a reputation to maintain as the only sane person onboard, he just offered, "Orgy?"

"Shut up, Matt," she said, and seized his last bar of grief chocolate.

"You're welcome," he yelled after her, as she went off to fix whatever'd gone wrong again.


End file.
